This page is a compendium of items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, damnable prevarications, rants and amusing anecdotes - about LAUSD and/or public education that didn't - or haven't yet - made it into the "real" 4LAKids blog and weekly e-newsletter at http://www.4LAKids.blogspot.com . 4LAKidsNews will be updated at arbitrary random intervals.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Getting the lead out: SCHOOLS NATIONWIDE STILL GRAPPLE WITH LEAD IN WATER, DIGGING FURTHER INTO A WATER PROBLEM + CA ISN'T USING BLOOD-TEST DATA THAT COULD HELP FOCUS EXIDE LEAD CLEANUP EFFORTS

SCHOOLS NATIONWIDE STILL GRAPPLE WITH LEAD IN WATER

By Michael Wines, Patrick McGeehan and John Schwartz | The
New York Times | http://nyti.ms/1RCvUdn

MARCH 26, 2016::JERSEY CITY — Anxious parents
may wonder how a major school system like Newark’s could overlook lead in the
drinking water of 30 schools and 17,000 students. The answer: It was easy. They
had to look only a few miles away, at the century-old classrooms of the schools
here, across the Hackensack River.

The Jersey City Public Schools district discovered lead
contamination in eight schools’ drinking fountains in 2006, and in more schools
in 2008, 2010 and 2012. But not until 2013 did officials finally chart a
comprehensive attack on lead, which by then had struck all but six schools.

This winter’s crisis in Flint, Mich., has cast new attention
on lead in water supplies. But problems with lead in school water supplies have
dragged on for years — aggravated by ancient buildings and plumbing, prolonged
by official neglect and tight budgets, and enabled by a gaping loophole in
federal rules that largely exempts schools from responsibility for the purity
of their water.

Children are at greatest risk from lead exposure, and school
is where they spend much of their early lives. But cash-starved school
administrators may see a choice between spending money on teachers or on
plumbing as no choice at all.

“They feel it’s almost better not to sample, because you’re
better off not knowing,” Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech University civil
engineering professor who has fought for lead safety nationwide, said in an
interview.

The problem is persistent and widespread. Baltimore’s public
schools switched entirely to bottled water in 2007 because ripping out the lead
plumbing would have been impractical. Sebring, Ohio, found elevated lead levels
in August after workers had stopped adding an anti-corrosion chemical to the
water supply.

THE LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT allotted $19.8
million in September to retrofit or remove its 48,000 drinking fountains to
erase a small but tenacious lead threat. Ithaca, N.Y., schools switched
temporarily to bottled water in January after water tests found elevated lead
levels at two schools.

Congress could easily have cracked down on lead in schools.
In fact, it once did. The 1988 Lead Contamination Control Act required schools
to scrap lead-lined water coolers, test drinking water and remedy any
contamination they found. But a federal appeals court struck down part of the
law affecting schools in 1996. And while some states have devised their own
lead-testing rules, federal lawmakers have yet to revisit the issue.

The only regulation left is a 1991 rule by the federal
Environmental Protection Agency requiring periodic tests for lead and copper by
most public water systems, whether the supplier is a big utility or a well in a
trailer park or campground.

But although schools and day care centers are the main
sources of water for children on most weekdays, only the few schools that
operate their own wells fall under the rule. The vast majority of schools use
treated water from utilities.

And while the utilities test their water, virtually all lead
contamination occurs inside schools — in lead pipes, water-cooler coils and
linings, and in leaded-metal fountains and taps.

“If you’re a mom-and-pop coffee shop in Sparta, New Jersey,
and have a private well, you’re required to certify every quarter,” said Robert
Barrett, the chief executive of Aqua Pro-Tech Laboratories, a New Jersey
environmental testing laboratory. “But if you’re a school, you don’t have to do
anything.”

Mr. Barrett, whose firm tests water in 13 states, said the
Newark and Flint revelations prompted reassessments by schools and other
institutions that had not scrutinized their plumbing in years, if ever.

“No one was testing,” he said. “Now all of a sudden they’re
all going crazy.”

In Newark, where school officials disclosed elevated lead
levels earlier this month, Mr. Barrett’s firm began testing water systemwide on
March 19. Students at the 30 schools now drink bottled water, and the youngest
students were offered free blood tests.

There, as in LOS ANGELES, high lead levels persisted even
though workers flush the water pipes every weekday to push out lead that
accumulates overnight. Nor did some filters on Newark school fountains reduce
contamination sufficiently.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says children
whose blood lead content exceeds five micrograms per deciliter — 50 parts per
billion, or less than a millionth of an ounce in a pint — should see a doctor.
High blood lead levels can stunt a child’s mental development and damage a range
of organs. But even smaller amounts can affect children’s intellectual
development, and the agency says no level of lead is safe.

The E.P.A.’s 1991 lead rule — the one that requires most
public water systems to periodically test for lead and copper — limits the
amount of lead in drinking water to no more than 15 parts per billion. The rule
is being revised, though, and that limit could soon be lowered. Even though the
rule does not apply to most schools, districts that do monitor drinking water
generally use it as a guideline.

Tainted water is not the biggest source of lead exposure in
humans; on average, the E.P.A. says, it makes up about a fifth of
contamination. Pregnant women working in schools are at greatest risk because
fetuses are most profoundly affected by contamination. Women face an increased
risk of miscarriage, along with potential organ damage and developmental
problems in the baby.

Schools built before 1986, when an amendment to the Safe
Drinking Water Act banned lead plumbing, pose the greatest hazard. Fountains
may be fed water through lead pipes commonly used in the early 20th century.
Older water coolers may have lead linings and components.

But even newer buildings can face a threat. Under industry
pressure, Congress defined “lead-free” in the amendment as no more than 8
percent lead. Plumbing hardware like faucets and connectors often contained
that much lead until 2013, when the permissible level fell to near zero.

LOS ANGELES school officials learned of the 8-percent rule
the hard way. In the 131 schools built over the last decade, the district
installed thousands of water fountains with long-lasting brass fittings to
reduce maintenance costs. They later discovered that the leaded brass fittings
tainted the water in some fountains beyond the E.P.A.’s lead standard.

The district’s $19.8 million lead initiative seeks, in part,
to correct that. “The approach we’re taking now is to get rid of anything with
a brass fitting,” Roger Finstad, the district’s maintenance and operations
director, said.

In New York City, officials have uprooted and replaced all
lead pipes leading from water mains into schools, swiftly replaced equipment when
tests showed high lead levels, and ordered weekly pipe flushing at any school
with a violation. All schools’ water is regularly tested. The result? Only 1.3
percent of nearly 90,000 water tests have exceeded the city’s lead threshold.
The program is “a model for the nation,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, an expert
on lead and a professor of preventive medicine and pediatrics at the Icahn
School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

That scorched-earth approach is the surest way to control
lead threats, but few school systems have the money or knowledge to pursue it.
Many instead follow a whack-a-mole strategy, testing a sample of water sources,
then fixing or disabling ones with excessive lead concentrations.

That can be ineffective, because the levels at any fountain
or tap can swing wildly as residue breaks loose in lead plumbing. Dr. Edwards,
the Virginia Tech specialist, recalled testing a single tap 10 times. Eight
tests judged the water perfectly safe. The other two showed “astronomical
amounts of lead,” he said, “like eating five to 10 paint chips.”

“This is like Russian roulette,” he said.

So it was in Newark, where the E.P.A. sampled water in 2003
as part of an outreach program on lead, and found contamination in three schools.
The district began replacing school water fountains and installing filters on
violating water sources, but never got ahead of the problem. From 2012 through
2015, nearly one in eight water samples exceeded the E.P.A.’s 15
parts-per-billion threshold.

“Did we know we had a problem? Yes,” said Marion A. Bolden,
Newark’s superintendent early last decade. “ Did we think we had adequately
remediated the problem? Yes.”

Here in Jersey City, the public schools are classic
candidates for a lead problem. Two-thirds are over 80 years old, and a third
more than a century old. The system had been under state control since 1989
because of poor management and low test scores; only recently, with Marcia
Lyles as the superintendent, did the state agree to return control to local
officials.

Jersey City taps and fountains went untested until the
E.P.A. took samples in 2006, again part of the federal outreach program, and
turned up lead concentrations up to 60 times the federal threshold at eight
schools. Not until early 2008, after more tests found fresh contamination at
six of the schools, did the superintendent at the time, Charles T. Epps Jr.,
switch those students to bottled water.

Jersey City’s mayor then, Jerramiah Healy, declared the
matter closed. “We believe this is a situation that is isolated to the affected
schools and to certain water fountains within those schools,” T he Jersey
Journal newspaper quoted him as saying.

Mr. Healy was wrong. The district tested all its fountains
and taps in mid-2008 and found that water in 27 more schools was as much as 80
times higher than the E.P.A.’s lead threshold. Under pressure from advocates,
the district tested selected water sources at 38 buildings in 2010 and found
yet more lead. In a 98-year-old school, Nicolaus Copernicus Elementary, 16 of
19 water fountains and coolers were found above permissible levels.

That school and some others were switched to bottled water,
and fountains and taps were turned off. But that was not the end.

A 2013 retest of all 2,000-plus water sources found yet more
contamination, including one fountain whose water tested 853 times the accepted
maximum. Among those water sources were 10 in prekindergarten classes where
daily tooth brushing was part of the regimen.

“Any fountains in this building, they don’t even work,” the
Nicolaus Copernicus principal, Diane Pistilli, said this week. “Parents were
concerned, and rightly so.”

●Michael Wines reported from
Jersey City, and Patrick McGeehan and John Schwartz from New York. Kate Taylor
contributed reporting from New York, and Tyler Alicea from Ithaca, N.Y. Alain
Delaquérière and Doris Burke contributed research.

_______________

DIGGING FURTHER INTO A WATER PROBLEM

New York Times | http://nyti.ms/1LPVwqX

MARCH 26, 2016::While the water crisis in
Flint, Mich., has focused attention on water safety, many of the country’s
13,500 public school districts take the purity of their water for granted,
experts say. Yet lead contamination has been found in schools nationwide.

Michael Wines, Patrick
McGeehan and John Schwartz, who have been writing about water safety for The
New York Times, recently discussed some of what they have found in their
reporting. Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

JOHN SCHWARTZ: One of the frustrating things about federal
regulations on water safety is that they apply only to exactly what they apply
to — that is, they extend only as far as their enabling legislation allows. In
the case of regulating drinking water, the regulations generally apply to
suppliers of water, like your town water plant. When Congress tried to stretch
the rules to apply them to schools through the Lead Contamination Control Act,
the federal courts said the federal government could not order the states
around that way. Congress has not done anything on the issue since then, so
compliance with the Lead Contamination Control Act is voluntary. And so it’s
not surprising that things slip through the cracks.

PATRICK MCGEEHAN: Still, John, many people seem taken aback
to learn that there is no mandatory testing of water in schools. They may have
had a false sense of security because they receive regular reports on the
results of water testing in their towns. But those results may not include any
schools. Momentum is building for change, though. In New Jersey, legislators
are already calling for a law to make sure the water in schools gets tested for
lead.

SCHWARTZ: It really is hard to assign responsibility or
blame for the problem. Is it the federal E.P.A., state or city regulators, or
school district officials? I might just go a little weaselly here and say “all
of the above.” There’s no part of the system that hasn’t failed our kids when
it comes to lead even though the laws have done a tremendous amount to remove
lead from our environment — from gasoline, from paint, from plumbing fixtures.
What’s left can be chalked up to a failure of will at every level, with
occasional crises that can place the blame more on one link in the chain than
another.

MICHAEL WINES: I’d add our political leaders to the list.
Efforts to rid our homes and water of lead have lost government support and
money in the last decade as so-called discretionary spending has been slashed
from the federal budget. We don’t even properly track lead levels in adults
anymore. The federal government stopped funding state grants for adult lead
surveillance in 2013, and though it has restored part of the money, at least 13
states have stopped collecting data. Some of the 28 that still do collect data
help pay for it with money from federal grants that are meant for other lead
programs.

SCHWARTZ: Another issue is so-called environmental injustice
— concerns that officials ignore complaints about the water supply from poorer
minority communities. In Flint, a report by an independent task force focused
on these concerns. They are part of the story of the problems in school
districts, but not the whole story. As our story shows, some new schools have
shown up with lead problems, too, because the school districts paid higher
prices for brass plumbing fittings that contained lead.

MCGEEHAN: I have been struck by how genuinely disappointed
scientific experts seem with the response, or lack thereof, from government
officials who have seen data showing high lead levels. Over and over, I heard
that little or no action was taken after tests showed alarmingly high levels of
lead in water that kids are ingesting on a daily basis.

SCHWARTZ: What about adults? There is no safe level of lead,
and each of us grown-ups probably has fewer I.Q. points than we would have if
there wasn’t lead in the environment when we were kids. I wonder how much
better off we’d be if we’d gotten the lead out earlier, and more effectively.
Remember that lead also has been linked to behavior problems, including impulse
control and aggression.

WINES: All of us probably do have lead in our bodies, John,
and there used to be a lot more. Back in 1976, when leaded gasoline was still
the norm, the lead blood level for an average American was 12.8 micrograms per
deciliter. By today’s standards, that’s shockingly high. More recent data, from
2009 and later, put the level at 1.2 micrograms for adults and 1.8 for kids,
who are far more vulnerable to lead’s effects than grown-ups. Some of the
danger does decline with age; infants and toddlers are at greatest risk.

So aren’t the adults who were kids in the 1970s largely
productive members of society today? Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean they
wouldn’t have been even more productive without so much lead in their bodies.
Check out this study, which concludes that kids with a lead blood level above
7.5 micrograms have “significantly greater” intellectual deficits than kids
below 7.5. Or this one, which blames blood-lead levels between 5 and 9
micrograms for a stunning share of failing grades in reading and math by
Chicago third-graders. Many of us who were toddlers then are slightly dimmer
bulbs, I.Q.-wise, than we would have been if we hadn’t been sucking in gas
fumes.

MCGEEHAN: When you discuss even relatively low levels of
lead with water-testing experts, their facial expressions and tones of voice
tell you right away that there is cause for concern. If they’re worried, we all
should be.

WINES: But don’t dwell on the past. Blood levels of lead not
wildly far from the current national average are linked to heart troubles,
clogged arteries, premature births, kidney disease and other nasty stuff. Add
to that the social and financial cost we’re all paying for the unfortunate
fraction of kids who really do have high blood-lead levels — mostly minorities
and immigrants in poor neighborhoods. They will pay stiffer costs as adults in
lost intellectual capacity, and a number of studies suggest that at least some
violence by young men is tied to high levels of lead in babyhood.

MCGEEHAN: I am now dubious about the quality of the water my
sons consumed at their suburban public schools. The data on our town’s water
samples look fine, but it is possible that they do not reflect the situation in
the schools. Some of those buildings are quite old, and that can create a
problem. I’m now relieved when I see my sons and their schoolmates carrying
bottled water, no matter the cost.

SCHWARTZ: This morning my New Jersey town sent a note to
parents promising to share all testing information and stating that the most
recent tests, in 2013, had shown no lead contamination. Parents should demand
that information — and if there’s any doubt at all, send kids to school with a
water bottle clipped to the backpack. But I’m no fan of bottled water, which
creates waste problems and costs too much.

MCGEEHAN: I have occasionally sent my younger son off with a
reusable one filled from the tap. But I probably won’t do that anymore,
landfills be damned.

SCHWARTZ: By water bottle, Patrick, I meant that having your
kids carry around a reusable bottle is a good idea, filled from the tap at home
if you are comfortable with your own water supply. I just don’t like the
disposable water bottles. Not that I want to start a huge argument or anything,
but there were two million tons of plastic water bottles in landfills in 2005!
Only 13 percent of plastic bottles get recycled. And the water isn’t
necessarily any better than tap water, notes the Natural Resources Defense
Council. Just sayin’.

_____________

STATE ISN'T USING BLOOD-TEST DATA THAT COULD HELP FOCUS
EXIDE CLEANUP EFFORTS

"ONCE THE EXPOSURES
HAVE OCCURRED, THERE'S NO AMOUNT OF SPECIAL EDUCATION, NOTHING THAT CAN REWIND
THE CLOCK." - Jane Williams, California Communities Against Toxics.

by Tony Barboza and Ben Poston | LA Times | http://lat.ms/1q86qhS

March 26, 2016::The state of California has
blood test results showing high levels of lead in children living near the
closed Exide battery plant in Vernon but is not using the information to direct
its massive cleanup of lead-contaminated homes and yards.

Health experts say the test results should be used to help
pinpoint neighborhoods most in need of swift cleanup because children there
have been exposed to more of the poisonous metal. Lead, which spewed for
decades from the Exide Technologies recycling facility, is especially dangerous
to young children, putting them at risk of lifelong developmental and
behavioral problems.

Blood-testing data have guided government responses to lead
contamination elsewhere. In Flint, Mich., the state is using maps of children's
blood lead levels to target neighborhoods hardest hit by the city's lead-contaminated
drinking water.

But in California, officials have been unable to launch a
similar effort. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control said it
has tried unsuccessfully for more than two years to obtain blood lead levels
from state and county health agencies, which keep the records.

In September, 13 months after the cleanup began, it formally
requested census tract-level data but still hasn't received it from state health
officials. So the department is relying on soil tests, wind patterns and
proximity to the plant to guide its cleanup of thousands of homes.

The state Department of Public Health has yet to provide the
information, according to toxics regulators. The health agency said it is
prohibited by medical privacy law from releasing data showing individual test
results but is finalizing an extensive analysis of whether people in census
tracts near the Exide plant have increased blood lead levels.

The toxic substances department said it knows of only two
children — a baby and a toddler — who have had high levels of lead in their
blood across the contaminated southeast Los Angeles County communities of Bell,
Boyle Heights, Commerce, East Los Angeles, Huntington Park, Maywood and Vernon.
Officials learned of the children because their families told the department
about their blood test results.

To gauge the extent of the problem, The Times obtained and
analyzed blood test records from the Los Angles County Department of Public
Health. The analysis found that 547 people under the age of 21 living in the
Exide cleanup area tracts had high levels of lead in their blood from 2010 to
2014.

Elevated levels are defined as 5 micrograms or more per
deciliter of blood, the threshold used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. Young children with levels above 5 are among the highest 3%
tested nationwide.

The county records analyzed by The Times are not as complete
as the data held by the state health department, which collects the results of
all blood lead screenings in California. Not all children are tested, however,
so the data are considered an underestimate.

In an effort to boost testing near the Exide plant, the L.A.
County Department of Public Health has for two years administered an
Exide-funded, voluntary blood-screening program ordered by state toxics
regulators.

The state shares blood-testing information with county
health officials, which are tasked with preventing lead poisoning. But the
toxics department has not obtained summaries of those results to inform its
cleanup, despite repeated requests, spokesman Jim Marxen said.

Public health experts say that's a serious limitation.

"Officials should rely on blood lead data and soil lead
levels to identify hot spots and target cleanup," said Bruce Lanphear, a
public health physician and professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser
University who studies lead and children's environmental health.
"Otherwise they will be shooting in the dark."

Lead has contaminated as many as 10,000 properties within a
1.7-mile radius of the Exide plant, according to state regulators. Exide took
over the car battery smelting facility in 2000. The company and the previous
owners were cited repeatedly for violating hazardous waste laws.

The plant closed permanently in March 2015 under a deal with
federal prosecutors. The closure followed a criminal investigation and
community outrage toward state regulators, who had allowed Exide to operate for
decades without a full permit.

The cleanup began in 2014 and has been dogged by community
complaints that state officials have dragged their feet on an urgent health
threat.

The contamination was discovered months before high lead
levels were found in the water in Flint, yet authorities in Michigan are
already using maps of children's blood lead levels to target neighborhoods for
water sampling, lead line replacement, bottled water and filters, said Mona
Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician and professor at Michigan State University.

Hanna-Attisha, whose research showed an increase in children
with elevated blood lead levels after a change in the city's water supply, said
such screening data have been used in communities across the U.S. to find
neighborhoods in need of intervention.

"It's easy," she said. "And it should be done
more."

In California, community groups and researchers began asking
long ago for state officials to use blood-screening data in the cleanup and to
release the information to the public in an effort to protect children.

Once the exposures have occurred, there's no amount of
special education, nothing that can rewind the clock. — Jane Williams, director
of California Communities Against Toxics

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who represents
the areas near Exide, called the use of blood lead levels "very
important" to the cleanup.

"There shouldn't be any reason why we don't know what's
happening," Solis said. "If people don't prioritize that, then
they're going to look over these communities."

Lead is a powerful neurotoxin for which there is no safe
level of exposure. Even small amounts have been shown to lower IQs, reduce
academic achievement and lead to permanent health and learning deficiencies.

Blood testing is typically ordered by physicians for
children under age 6, who are most at risk of irreversible toxic effects from
ingesting lead in contaminated soil, dust, water and paint.

Community groups, environmentalists and elected officials in
the predominantly low-income Latino neighborhoods around the facility scored a
victory last month when Gov. Jerry Brown announced a plan to spend $176.6
million to sample 10,000 homes and clean the roughly 25% most contaminated of
them over the next two years.

But the funding legislation has not yet been approved. And
with full remediation expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, state
officials will have to make tough decisions about where to direct limited
resources first.

Soil sampling of several hundred homes near Exide has found
that about 99% have lead levels that require cleanup, according to the toxics
department.

The department estimates 2,500 homes may have lead exceeding
1,000 parts million — the state's threshold for hazardous waste. The state's
screening level for residential soil is 80 parts per million.

Homes with the highest soil concentrations, along with those
with bare soil or young children, are being given higher priority. Any home
where a child is found to have elevated blood lead level also "goes to the
top of the list," Marxen said.

The mother of one of the two children known to have higher
lead levels told the toxics department in November that her 16-month-old baby
had a blood lead level of between 7 and 8 micrograms per deciliter. Tests of
the Maywood home found lead concentrations of 400 to 1,000 parts per million
and the contaminated soil was removed in February, according to the department.

The department learned about the other child in April 2015
during a phone call between a toxics department employee and a Boyle Heights
mother who said her toddler had a blood lead level of 9.9 micrograms per
deciliter.

The woman was referred to the county health department and
her yard was cleaned up, the department said.

Authorities have advised residents awaiting soil testing and
cleanup to take precautions: Wash hands and toys, keep children from playing on
bare soil and take off their shoes before they enter their homes.

Grace and Everett Potvin, whose Commerce home was found to
have lead levels requiring cleanup, have ripped out tomato and chile plants
from their small garden and restricted the places their grandchildren can play
outside.

"My priority is this little boy," Grace Potvin
said as her 2-year-old grandson Shaun played in the living room. "I don't
want him to be mentally disabled or any problems health-wise."

Potvin urged government officials to take all necessary
action to protect the health of children in her neighborhood. "Take care
of it," she said. "Take care of it."